Legend Beyond The Stars Page 32

  Tarak released his grip on her and stood face impassive, with his arms folded across his chest.

  Jessamine sidled backwards before rushing into speech.

  “You see, we’re not so keen on spendin’ the rest of our lives wanderin’ aimlessly in space. We prefer to stay somewhere safe for a while. Some don’t want to stay forever, only until we have found a sure way home. I guess some of us may even change our minds and want to return home then too. Go back to our families. We need to have assurances this will not be a problem.”

  “I think that’s fair and I’m sure the Commander will agree.” Alana turned to Tarak, her chin tilting in unspoken challenge.

  A slow smile broadened over his face and she beamed back, dazed with happiness.

  Tarak inclined his head. “Agreed. You have my word we will do our best to ensure a safe passage to your home planet for those who wish to return. None of us want a repeat of what has happened to your friend. As long as you accept we will do our utmost to bind you to our home here.”

  “Then, I’d also like to be able to give my people an option.”

  “It is my intention should we find your home planet to offer a trade agreement to your leaders and any who wish to leave will be given safe passage.”

  Norman held up a long bony finger. “The Scaleen Traders’ ship will have the correct coordinates for the last jump as well as all the gateway maps we will need. If we found them …” His voice trailed off and he quailed beneath the Commander’s glower.

  “Naturally that has already been considered. This will be attended to as soon as matters here are more stabilised,” Tarak said in a stiff voice.

  “Oooh and don’t forget the Elite battle cruiser so hell bent on blasting us into oblivion,” Elise interrupted, her voice high and clear with excitement. She linked arms with Norman and the pair of them nodded, their expressions earnest like a couple of learned professors.

  “True.” Alana smiled at them. She snapped her fingers. “I’ve been giving the presence of the cruiser a lot of thought, and have come to the conclusion they intended to rendezvous with the Traders. Perhaps they were the Traders’ initial customers and then someone had the bright idea of contacting the Darkons.”

  “Of course. And then when they turned up at the same time decided to start a fight.”

  Alana narrowed her eyes. “Getting rid of the evidence.”

  The women sucked in breaths and exchanged knowing glances.

  “There could be more of us out there!” Jessamine rubbed her hands. “So what’s the plan?”

  Alana swallowed the bubble of laughter at the look of baffled consternation on Tarak’s face as he listened to their conversation.

  Satisfaction welled deep inside as she stood surrounded by her happy determined friends. Wry amusement rose at the warriors who had moved closer and stood as transfixed as rabbits in front of a pit of king brown snakes.

  Joy blossomed in her heart.

  “Plan?” Commander Tarak had rediscovered his voice.

  Back straight, Alana raised her chin high and said, “Yeah, you know. Find the others. Fight the bad guys. Save the universe. We are so ready to kick arse!”

  Epilogue

  Royal Warlord Tarak prowled one end of the medie chamber to the other, casting glances rife with anxiety at the occupant crouched on her knees on the examination table. He waved an omnipotent fist into the air.

  “This is inhumane. Barbaric! I should never have agreed to return to the old ways.”

  Alana rolled her eyes. “Relax, Tarak. Hey, I’m the one doing all the work here.” She grimaced as another wave of pain rolled over her.

  “Nearly there.” Tina smiled at her from her position at the end of the bed. “A few more pushes and we’ll have our first baby born.”

  “This is most interesting, Alana,” the Jurian burbled from his post.

  Alana took another deep breath and slowly eased it out. She gasped out, “Hell, don’t tell me you’re taking notes!”

  Norman blinked owlishly with surprise. He waggled the compo pad. “Naturally. I am also recording this on screen so I can study it at length.”

  “If I could get up from this bed, I’d strangle you.”

  Tarak strode to her side, gently enclosed her tightly clenched hand in his larger one. “Do you wish me to terminate him, my Alana? This I will do if you so wish.”

  Alana groaned. Both Tina and Jessamine erupted into laughter and Norman ran, hissing to the opposite side of the room to press himself against the wall. “No, just an expression.”

  “This is so seriously cool.” Jessamine patted her own rounded belly. She swivelled to the right to try and bend over to get a better look. “I can see the head.”

  “Is this a good thing?” croaked Tarak, his grip squeezed hers.

  Alana grinned at his strained features. “Yes. Totally good.”

  The entrance door slid open and Elise hurried into the room, straight to Alana’s side.

  The expression on the younger girl’s face had Alana coming to instant alert. “What is it?”

  “We’ve intercepted a signal.” Elise gulped air. “It’s Carly. We’ve found their shuttle!”

  The pressure to bear down became even more intense. Exultation and pain ripped through her simultaneously.

  Hell, she had to get out of this room.

  She had work to do.

  A mission to organise.

  Her gaze met Tarak’s in complete understanding. Alana clenched her teeth and obeyed her body’s command.

  Those disturbing yellow flames blazed in his obsidian eyes and he smiled. His strength, pride and love enveloped her in a warm protective cocoon.

  Sheer unadulterated joy sizzled through her.

  She had made the right choice.

  Alana pushed their son into the world.

  About the Author

  SE can’t remember a time when she didn’t have a book in her hand. She combines passionate romance with action and adventure set in dangerous worlds. Her heroines are valiant and know exactly what to do with their alpha heroes.

  She writes in the romance genres of science fiction, fantasy, futurism and ancient history. An Aussie to her backbone, SE lives down-under in beautiful Hunter Valley.

  Her first release, Paying the Forfeit, is a short erotic romance story set in a post-apocalyptic world. It was published by Momentum Publishing and is available through all major e-book sellers.

  Legend Beyond the Stars, is her first major single title release and is book 1 in the series Legends of the Seven Galaxies.

  ISBN: 978-0-85799-016-7

  Title: Legend Beyond the Stars

  Copyright © 2012 by S.E. Gilchrist

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Locked Bag 7002, Chatswood D.C. NSW, Australia, 2067.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited and are used under license to the Publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in Australia, New Zealand, the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  Excerpt from Rayessa and the Space Pirates by Donna Maree Hanson

  Outpost 311

  My throat itched as I connected the power relay above my head. The torch clipped to my belt jerked light be
ams from floor to ceiling doing little to help me see clearly. I groaned and when I lowered my arms, knives of pain dug into my shoulders. As I wiped sweat from my forehead and eyes, I wished I was watching a vid instead of doing this. With a snort of disgust, I left the cords dangling while I took a sniff of oxygen. Then I turned the respirator off with a snap.

  I breathed in the thick, gluggy gas that passed for air in this corridor and felt an ache arrive just behind my left eyebrow. That’s what you got when you lived in a forgotten, hollowed-out asteroid.

  I looked up at the dangling cords and thought of Gris topside trying to align the solar sail and sighed. No choice but to get the darn thing fixed before the plants died in the hydroponics bay. Besides providing a small of amount of food, the plants converted carbon dioxide to oxygen, something the air filters couldn’t do. Even I knew that.

  I stretched upwards to place the cables back in the conduit and groaned when I heard my ragged body-stocking tear again.

  ‘Rats,’ I said, as I eased the piece of metal plating I used for a shirt. What I wouldn’t give for a nice, new, sleek ship suit. Then, I inhaled a mouthful of air so thick I could feel it clog my lungs and coughed. There was a crackle of static and I groped for the commlink hanging off my belt.

  ‘Rae?’

  ‘Gris?’ I said into my commlink, which was taped together and had its power cell exposed.

  Gris’ familiar slurred speech sounded in my ear. ‘Sail…is…up…Rae,’ he said, from the surface of the asteroid.

  Gris, a towering hulk of flesh, had been injured in a pirate attack a few years before. I had nursed him back to health with the aid of the dilapidated med unit but something wasn’t right in his head. He had never been the same man again.

  Often I dreamed that my life had all been a mistake and that I was actually living on a Class Five Space Station with floor-to-ceiling view ports, overlooking the rings of Saturn or the storms of Jupiter, enjoying all the modern conveniences of the 2050s. I fantasised that I had friends my own age and we hung out at the vidmovie arcade and talked about our favourite actors. I frowned as I went back to work.

  I checked the alignment. The sail was slightly off, although some power was being converted by the superconductor. I checked the solar radiation levels in the hydroponics bay. Better, but not perfect.

  I took another snort of air and said into the commlink, ‘Gris, can you shift the sail to the left another half a centimetre? Yep that’s it.’

  I checked the monitor. The power levels were up. ‘Okay, head back now. Meet you at the control centre. I think I can scrounge up some de-moulded hard tack and a tin of beans.’

  Gris’ guffaw reached me over the crackle of static. Our shared joke. The only food we had was hardtack and beans.

  After replacing the ceiling panel, I walked along the hexagon-shaped corridors. I passed the signs of our scrapping operation, the gaping rents in the wall where the metal planking curled away from the bulkhead, leaving the superstructure and conduits exposed. I headed back to the control centre, taking another snort of oxygen to keep me going.

  Around the corner at a junction, I paused. A curse burst out of me. I had to stop here and work out how to get back. We’d sold the signs for food. I looked for an identifier, shining the torch along the edge. The corridors linking the bay to the main service areas were out. We couldn’t afford the power or the oxygen to keep them useable all the time. Only one was safe to use. My torch revealed the squiggle dash I had etched into the rim. That was the way back to the control centre.

  My head was feeling a bit fuzzy from the lack of clean air by the time I made it to the main corridor. I shoved the door to slide it back, but it was stuck. I unhitched a power cell from my belt and attached the switch cable. The door slid open jerkily. Stepping through, it slid shut as I pulled my hand and the precious power cell through. The air was cleaner here closer to the centre, and I breathed it in deeply. The headache that had begun in the service corridor would fade eventually.

  Bending down, I retied my handmade boots and adjusted the shin plating over my leggings. Gris had made these clothes for me, using scrap and wiring to hold together the rotting remains of my body-stocking.

  When I entered the control centre, I caught a glimpse of myself in the stainless-steel plating. My pale skin was grimy, nothing like those made up-actors in the vidmovies. My brown hair was dirty and hung limply over my shoulders. Gris had hacked it a few months ago, even so it was still shoulder length. Bulging embarrassingly from underneath the plating were my breasts. I tried to ease them back. I wasn’t quite used to them yet. A great hole in my stocking over my midriff matched the one I’d just acquired on my right thigh. My elbows, too, poked through the sleeves of both arms, and I had various burn holes dotted down my forearms. Those were from dismantling sections of the outpost with a blowtorch. I wasn’t very good at it. Maybe next trade we could manage a real ship suit, fit for a 16 year old. For now, I had to live with what I had.

  Gris bounced in. He hadn’t been brought up on the asteroid like me so he still had trouble with the light gravity. His bare chest was laced with scars and his lopsided trousers were cut above the knees. He wore a metal apron secured with wire around his waist and buttocks. It saved a few embarrassing moments for both of us. Since his head injury, he tended to undress at odd times. The ties slowed down those impulses and gave me time to exit.

  Stretching carefully, I got up to open the beans and placed the hard tack on our plates.

  ‘Tea?’ I asked Gris.

  ‘Umm, yes please,’ he replied with a thick tongue.

  ‘You did well today, Gris. I think we’ll live a little bit longer. Though if you ask me,’ I said, plonking down in the command chair. My serving of beans swam in thin, tasteless sauce. I pushed them around the plate without much interest. ‘Not much point is there. I mean, we’re stuck here unless we want to join the pirates or illegal traders.’

  ‘Captain Stroder,’ said Gris, dropping beans from his mouth.

  ‘Yes, I know Dad said we had a duty to man the outpost, but he is gone now isn’t he? Let me see,’ I said, reaching down and drawing out my routine checklist from under my chair. ‘Keep the landing bays powered and functional; maintain client facilities; relay messages and astronomical data; maintain…’

  I threw the checklist down and it clattered to the floor. Running that checklist was the only thing I knew. That and vidmovies and dealing with the rogue traders and the occasional pirate. I don’t ever remember going to school but I must have once because I could read…a bit.

  Everything seemed so pointless. ‘What the hell.’ I ranted to the ceiling. ‘No one’s coming. Haven’t seen a supply ship since I was 14.’

  ‘Captain Stroder said…’ repeated Gris.

  I glanced over to him as I swivelled around in the chair. He looked unhappy, so I got up and patted him on the head. He was hunched down, eating his beans on the floor so I could reach him easily.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gris. We’ve got nothing better to do. I’ll think I’ll take a nap after I re-watch my favourite vidmovie. Do the rounds will you?’

  ‘Yep,’ replied Gris, snaffling the rest of my uneaten beans as he left.

  I pulled the seat cushion off the command chair and shoved it beneath the console. I crawled in after it and lay my head down. After I stretched out under the console and folded a few bits of circuitry out of the way, I angled down the viewer.

  I selected A Slave’s Lament, my favourite vidmovie, featuring Del Divlan in the lead as a slave girl, slotted it in and hunkered down to watch. The opening sequence flashed up. How I admired Del’s clothes and the way she spoke. Would I ever be that grown up? I wondered. I mouthed a few of her lines, practising her accent. Eventually my eyes closed and I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Del telling her master how much she loved him.

  * * *

  Like the sample chapter?

  Buy Now from Amazon.com

  Buy Now from Amazon.co.uk

  E
xcerpt from Chaos Born by Rebekah Turner

  As my eyes moved over Arthur Roper through the two-way mirror, it occurred to me the saying was true. It really was hard out there for a pimp.

  Roper sat on a ratty bed in a ratty room in a ratty brothel in Bangkok, haggling with a bored looking woman for a discount on her services. The woman wore a dirty blonde wig and a white spandex cat suit several sizes too small. Her scarlet lips were pressed to thin lines, as if she’d gotten Roper’s measure and found him a quart short. Who could blame her? If my job required me to wear an outfit that gave me a painful looking camel-toe, I’d be unimpressed by life as well. Not to mention having to touch individuals like Roper. Personally, I’d need a flea bath after touching such a rodent. And touch him I knew I’d have to. Retrieval jobs were never easy. In my experience, no thief ever likes giving up their ill-gotten goods and they always need some encouragement.

  Most of the time my jobs were security work, retrievals, sometimes even an exorcism or two. Here, in the Outlands, maybe I’d be called a mercenary. Back home, in The Weald, I was called a Runner. My work brought me into contact with all sorts of scum and Arthur Roper was no exception. Back home, past the tollbooths that guarded the entryway into the hidden world of The Weald, Roper ran a couple of low-budget brothels. Roper wasn’t a nice pimp; I’d seen his handiwork on a couple of women’s faces and it was the kind of hurt that never healed quite right. But now, this predator was my prey, and I was damned good at what I did.

  I read the dirty blonde’s lips as they worked around what looked like imaginative profanities, and wished there was sound in the cramped viewing room. The click of a latch sounded behind me and a noxious vapour of cheap perfume filled the room. A thick voice spoke. “I don’t need this trouble. I want him gone.”

  Turning my head, I saw Norma, the owner of the brothel leaning against the closed door. Her faced was scrunched as tight as her steel-blue perm and she wore a lemon-yellow velour tracksuit. Like Roper, she was otherkin: a crossbreed of the mystic races. Norma was lucky that she could pass for human, magic and glamour spells didn’t work for long beyond The Weald. From the uneven shape of her ears and the slope of her nose, I guessed that after mostly human blood, she had some elf and maybe a sprinkling of hobgoblin thrown in.